Presents the fundamental ideas of Indian thinkers that have shaped the mind of Indian from 1770 to the post-modern era in the middle of 20th century in India. Lists the most Indian influential figures in the field of philosophy, political theory, activicism such as Rabindranath Tagore, Ram Mohan Roy, Swami Vivekananda, and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume XXIV, Number 1, April 1998, pp. 53-70 Hume on Justice to Animals, Indians and Women ARTHUR KUFLIK I. The Circumstances of Humean Justice For Hume, the virtue of justice is its "usefulness" to the support of society.1 To help prove this point, he guides us through a series of imaginative thought-experiments. Suppose that resources were infinitely available or that human beings were generous and kind (...) without limit: in such unusual circumstances, nobody would have even "dreamed of" the various property restrictions associated with justice. If the supposition seems too fanciful, the same point can be illustrated, at least to some extent, by special real-life circumstances as well: e.g., by the way that air or water or land go unregulated in those places where they are super-abundant or the way in which the line between what is "mine" and "thine" blurs in loving families or between intimate friends. Moving to the opposite extreme: suppose that resources were so scarce as to render it impossible for most people (regardless of their cooperative exertions) even to subsist. Or suppose that people were not merely limited in their benevolent concern but "perfectly malicious"! Once again, there would be little or no point to the observance of rules of justice. On Hume's account, such rules define a scheme of social cooperation. But by hypothesis, extreme scarcity makes even well-meaning cooperative effort unproductive. Extreme villainy makes it pointlessly dangerous. Indeed, in a world wholly villainous, just cooperative schemes would be altogether impossible. Arthur Kuflik is at the Department of Philosophy, The University of Vermont, 70 South Williams Street, Burlington, Vermont 05401-3404 USA. email: [email protected] 54 Arthur Kuflik What can we conclude? There is a range of circumstances within which schemes of justice make sense: (1) moderate scarcity (resources are adequate to sustain people, but not so extensive that everyone could have as much as might be desired); and (2) limited benevolence (people are neither saintly nor satanic; though clearly concerned about themselves, they are not incapable of caring about what happens to others). John Rawls has dubbed these conditions "the Humean circumstances of justice."2 Hume wants us to notice that they are the very conditions under which justice is both practically possible and socially necessary. Fortunately, they are also the conditions that most commonly prevail. ("The common situation of society is a medium amidst all these extremes" [EPM 188].) II. A More Puzzling Thought-experiment Suppose we grant that the foundation of justice is its usefulness to society. This raises a certain worry: aren't there groups whose members ought to be treated justly even though "society" could flourish just as well if they weren't? (Another way to put the point is to ask: just who are the members of "society"?) This very issue underlies one more puzzling, and even disturbing, Humean thought-experiment: Were there a species of creatures intermingled with men, which, though rational, were possessed of such inferior strength, both of body and mind, that they were incapable of all resistance, and could never, upon the highest provocation, make us feel the effects of their resentment; the necessary consequence, I think, is that we should be bound by the laws of humanity to give gentle usage to these creatures, but should not, properly speaking, lie under any restraint of justice with regard to them, nor could they possess any right or property, exclusive of such arbitrary lords. Our intercourse with them could not be called society, which supposes a degree of equality; but absolute command on one side, and servile obedience on the other.... And as no inconvenience ever results from the exercise of a power, so firmly established in nature, the restraints of justice and property, being totally useless, would never have place in so unequal a confederacy. (EPM 190-191) What can we learn from this thought-experiment? What insight into justice do we gain by imagining a "species of creatures intermingled" among us who, though endowed with some ability to think and to reason, are: (i) greatly inferior to us both physically and mentally; (ii) "incapable of all resistance" to our provocations; and... (shrink)

This book is an ethnological study in depth, of the worldview religious philosophy, and symbolic systems of a South American tribal society which neither conforms to the Andean pattern nor to that of tropical rainforest cultures. The Kogi Indians have created for themselves a world of colourful and, to Western eyes, absorbing dimensions.

Does Foucault’s work on sexuality open toward the possibility of a genealogy of sex understood as binary anatomical and genetic sexual difference? I believe that it does. I argue that, if we take s...

This article examines the change which occurred in discussions of cultural transmission between the Enlightenment and the liberal outlook of the nineteenth century. The former is exemplified mainly by eighteenth-century historical discussions, the latter by the thought of Alexis de Tocqueville. An interest in the influence of advanced Western cultures on seemingly inferior non-Western societies was consistent throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It was manifested mainly in discussions of the barbarian conquest of the Roman Empire on the one hand, (...) and of European colonial policies on the other. The sources discussed here evinced a clear Eurocentric chauvinism, yet were inherently non-racial in nature. While many Enlightenment intellectuals retained a generally positive view of cultural transmission, Tocqueville's post-revolutionary outlook was more pessimistic. (shrink)

The Glyde mural in the University of Alberta’s Rutherford Library is a testament to the history of Alberta as it was understood by white society in the 1950s. A contemporary viewer described the painting as depicting “the civilizing influences in the early life of the Province.” The prominent historical heroes in the mural represent the main institutions that were involved in this process of ‘civilizing the savages'. An artefact of modern colonial racism, it has overshadowed the threshold of the library’s (...) South reading room since 1951. This article brings the ideas of several historical theorists to bear on the impact and implications of the historical memory invoked by the mural. (shrink)

The Glyde mural in the University of Alberta’s Rutherford Library is a testament to the history of Alberta as it was understood by white society in the 1950s. A contemporary viewer described the painting as depicting “the civilizing influences in the early life of the Province.” The prominent historical heroes in the mural represent the main institutions that were involved in this process of ‘civilizing the savages'. An artefact of modern colonial racism, it has overshadowed the threshold of the library’s (...) South reading room since 1951. This article brings the ideas of several historical theorists to bear on the impact and implications of the historical memory invoked by the mural. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Vitoria Las Casas References Further Reading.

The following event dates back more than twenty years, when I made contact for the first time with the Otomi Indians in the craggy regions of the eastern Sierra Madre. At that time I went through life fortified by the hope and inspired by the naiveté and enthusiasm that I would add a supplementary stroke of the brush to the ethnographic picture of Indian Mexico. The disposition of my mind was far from that of a researcher seized by the (...) expectancy of the unforeseen, desirous to change the all too static and stereotypical image of the autochthonous communities that the academic tradition had created of the Americas. (shrink)

UNTIL very recently, the most perplexing mystery of Southwestern archeology -- what caused the collapse of the ancient empire of the Anasazi -- seemed all but solved. Careful scrutiny of tree-ring records seemed to establish that in the late 1200's a prolonged dry spell called the Great Drought drove these people, the ancestors of today's pueblo Indians, to abandon their magnificent stone villages at Mesa Verde and elsewhere on the Colorado Plateau, never to return again.

Indigenous ecologies in industrial societies need immediate attention in light of the ongoing debate on indigenous resource rights and decreasing biodiversity. This paper examines the functions and meanings of hunting, fishing, and gathering activities among contemporary Nez Perce Indians in Idaho, USA. The collected data were analyzed with Pierre Bourdieu's concepts of “symbolic capital” and “practice” within the framework of political ecology. The results clearly demonstrate that hunting, fishing, and gathering practices play significant roles not only in social and (...) religious but also economic and political senses within the contemporary Nez Perce society. This study suggests that investigation of indigenous ecologies in industrial societies take a synthesized approach between idealist and materialist perspectives. (shrink)

Virtually nonexistent in traditional American Indian communities, today American Indian women and children experience family violence at rates similar to those of the dominant culture. This article explores violence within American Indian communities as an expression of internalized oppression and as an extension of Euro-American violence against American Indian nations.

: Virtually nonexistent in traditional American Indian communities, today American Indian women and children experience family violence at rates similar to those of the dominant culture. This article explores violence within American Indian communities as an expression of internalized oppression and as an extension of Euro-American violence against American Indian nations.

Of the many interrelated themes in Pierre Hadot's Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault, two strike me as having a particular centrality. First, there is the theme of attention to the present instant. Hadot describes this as the ‘key to spiritual exercises’, and he finds the idea encapsulated in a quotation from Goethe's Second Faust: ‘Only the present is our happiness’. The second theme is that of viewing the world from above: ‘philosophy signified the (...) attempt to raise up mankind from individuality and particularity to universality and objectivity’. Insofar as both attention to the present and raising oneself to an objective view imply the mastery of individual anxiety, passion and desire, they belong to a single conception, that conception being one of a ‘return to the self’: Thus, all spiritual exercises are, fundamentally, a return to the self, in which the self is liberated from the state of alienation into which it has been plunged by worries, passions, and desires. The ‘self’ liberated in this way is no longer merely our egoistic, passionate individuality: it is our moral person, open to universality and objectivity, and participating in universal nature or thought. (shrink)

Hastings Center Report, Volume 52, Issue 1, Page 10-11, January/February 2022.